Tandia

A novel that I love is The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay. I can't remember if I wrote about it before, but it is a lovely novel about a young white English boy Peekay growing up in South Africa. Courtenay himself was born in South Africa and then immigrated to Australia. The Power of One was his first novel and it won lots of awards - I think they adapted it to film as well.
The sequel to The Power of One is called Tandia which was impossible to find in US. I had already read it a long time ago and I really wanted to reread it. Anyway I finally managed to get it on eBay from this Australian bookshop. The book is finally in my hands and i am reading it slowly to enjoy it. [Side Note: I do that sometimes, do something slowly to elongate the pleasure. The funniest one is my Firefly first season which I still haven't seen the last 3 episodes because I don't want them to finish!! Of course it's been so long since I last watched them that I have forgotten what was happening!!! :-P ]
Ok back to Tandia. While I was trying to find the book I read more about the life of Courtenay and the critiques of Tandia - I found out that Tandia was not as well received as The Power of One, even though there was a lot of expectations. It seems that almost immediate after The Power of One was published, Courtenay's family found out that his son was diagnosed with AIDS due to a blood transfusion and he died within a year or so. Meanwhile the publishers were pushing Courtenay to meet his deadline for Tandia and so... well that might be a definite reason why Tandia is not up to the same caliber as the earlier novel. So now while I read Tandia I keep thinking about the hell that Courtenay must have been going thru as he was writing Tandia. How can you be creative when something like this is going on? I don't know.
As a final aside, Courtenay has a bunch of other books which I have bought maybe 5 of. One of them is called April Fool's Day and is about the son who contracted AIDS and the days leading up to his death. The son died on April Fool's Day. what a day.
That is not a good day for anyone.